Lydia Davis Aya Nabih

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Remember one of those moments when a friend utters a single word or phrase and it makes you both burst into side-splitting laughter, leaving others around you perplexed. That is kind of how some of Davis's very short stories work, except there is not so much laughter.Many of her stories are about quirks and absurdities of our daily lives, little moments, our common experiences and absent-minded musings. These may be some little experiences which we vaguely recognize, but can't quite put our fing [...]

When Davis isn’t off winning MacArthur fellowships and whipping up essential translations of Proust and Flaubert she also writes almost-award-winning story collections of pulsating sharpness. To spend time in Varieties of Disturbance is to nestle down inside a superhuman mind in a continual state of ecstatic whirr and recline divinely on dark and comforting truths about the human condition. Like Ali Smith (who is better at novels) Davis favours micro-portraits, throwaway whimsies, vacation sna [...]

Hm. Stars. I don't know what to do about those pesky little starsI related to the stories on an intellectual level, that I can say for certain. They were well written and thoughtful. Problem is, I didn't relate to the stories emotionally at all. At all. And that, for me, is the most important part. I like stories that make me feel SOMETHING. Stories do not have to make me feel good, in fact, the best ones leave me feeling very unsettled. These stories, unfortunately, left me feeling nothing. I w [...]

Subtle and remarkable. I understand the misgivings some have regarding "micro-fiction" in general, but I would offer this as an argument for the form. Will post a link to my extended review, when I write it.

I admit that when I received this book in the mail nearly a year ago, I read the shortest stories first and these two-line stories made me feel (with a trace of shame) like Lydia Davis was cheating. Afraid that she would not live up to all the Lydia Davis hype, I tucked the book away in my shelves.Last night, this book seemed to want attention so I said okay and started reading from the beginning. Few stories are more than a page. The three long-ish stories in the book are all set up like lab re [...]

When I first heard about Lydia Davis, I felt like I should have already known of her. This is my first attempt to remedy that absence. I'm not surprised that the friend who recommended her comes from my book club that read Infinite Jest, as there is one story in this set that makes me think of David Foster Wallace (where the footnote is longer than the story.)And most stories in here are short. Short is an understatement. Tiny. I believe the word is micro fiction. Many are more like poetry. And [...]

I put that word on the page,but he added the apostrophe.- Collaboration with Fly, pg. 8* * *Like a tropical storm,I, too, may one day become "better organized."- Tropical Storm, pg. 19* * *Representatives of different food products manufacturerstry to open their own packaging.- Idea for a Short Documentary Film, pg. 22* * *Beyond the hand holding this book that I'm reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus - my extra hand.- Hand, pg. 30* * *If your eyeballs move, this mean [...]

There are different kinds of ‘special’ in this world:1. There is the ‘oh, that’s special’ from a mother or a colleague perhaps, when commenting on a new dress or a new coat of paint in your living room. Make no mistake, it’s not really compliment, it means that they just don’t know what else to say.2. There is the type of ‘special’ invented by marketeers: a now-or-never advertisement trick that always sounds like a good idea at the time, but rarely is.3. And, then there is the [...]

'varieties' is accurate in that she has several techniques, vaguely constellated around her interests (of translation and epistemology, of 'deep ideas' of self)e's a great bridge to the Modernists she's thinking about them--Kafka, Proust, Beckett, Woolf--throughout, but we hear her thinking in a very contemporary language, one that is constructed and fragmented *from* modernism, a cento of modernism. relatedly: she's a good mimic. beyond this also, she's several of her own styles. the short shor [...]

Lydia Davis’ Varieties of Disturbance is a unique short story collection with stories ranging in length from multiple pages to a single sentence. The stories are often clever with an underlying humor, but some I just fond plain odd. Perhaps I missed the point in a few of them. Quite a few of the shortest stories were more like humorous observations of life rather than stories. This collection of short stories is very character-driven. With a few of the stories, you aren’t introduced to the c [...]

Well basically my favorite book. Sean calls it "Proust tweets for Baller," Baller being me. I guess that is accurate. My favorite was the one in which she reads and doesn't read Worstward Ho on the bus.

dailycamera/news/2007/Lydia Davis' 'Varieties of Disturbance'By Jenny Shank For the CameraFriday, September 14, 2007Lydia Davis writes experimental short fiction, a practice that would seem to confine her work to the audience that reads obscure literary magazines. But Davis' stories are so skillful, incisive, and funny that she enjoys a much broader reach, publishing widely and earning many accolades and awards for her fiction, including a 2003 MacArthur Fellowship.How does Davis cast such a spe [...]

Do you remember when you were a teenager, and your friends all really liked this one band, but you just didn't understand the appeal of their music? And you had a sneaking suspicion that at least a few of your friends were pretending to like it to seem cool? And maybe even you pretended to like it to seem cool, too?That is how I feel about this collection, though I'm old enough now to not bother wasting time pretending to be cool. I just straight up don't get it. Another review I read said altho [...]

I love the short story form and Varieties of disturbance is one of the most innovative short story collections I've come across. I appreciated the stories with a very dead-pan reportlike feel and the use of repetition. My favorite story was We Miss You: A Study of Get-well letters From a Class of Fourth-Graders. There were so many that just left me exhilarated. I loved being surprised by all the different angles and techniques. I think the book really suits my way of thinking, this kind of going [...]

Lydia Davis' Varieties of Disturbance is crazy good.In my copy (and by "mine," I mean the Detroit Public Library's), there's a blurb by the late Grace Paley that goes: "Davis is the kind of writer about whom you say: 'Oh, at last!'"And that's it: it's all exhales and inhales. It's juxtapositions and rhythms. White space and absences. Sentences might turn tense and strange, only to unravel relaxedly in a single clause. Extraordinarily short stories that smack like snickering punchlines, paired ne [...]

I really liked this book, and took my time reading it. Some of the stories are very, very short. Some of them are a little long. All of them are interesting with a unique perspective. One of my favorites was "Tropical Storm," which I can quote in its entirety: "Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become 'better organized.'"There's another story that analyzes the get well letters sent to a 2nd grader by his classmates. Not the typical short story topic, but seems to fit right in. Another a [...]

I never write in books, never did in college, but I wrote in this one. I annotated the table of contents. Some of the stories in the collection were excellent, and halfway through the book I was ready to tear through the rest. But my attention flagged when the second half of the work didn't contain anything different from the first, anything improving upon the first portion. I will definitely come back to the half dozen I check-marked, but I'm not rushing out to buy the rest of the Lydia Davis c [...]

writer has a unique style. every single story makes you think about smth after reading it. I apretiate this being different and innovative, but this is not a book that you keep reading and reading altough I like the idea behind a story, I confess that I couldn't finish some of them :)

Not all of it landed with me, but when it did it was like an electrical current. Favorite stories:Kafka Cooks DinnerGrammar QuestionsWe Miss You: A Study of Get-Well Letters from a Class of Fourth-Graders

I feel like I missed the boat on this one friends. Inventive, smart, unique, I agree but I felt cold most of the time. The short shorts were exceptionally well done, however, I think I need to read another one of hers just in case.

[rating = B-]I love when Ms. Davis writes short, sweet, and to the point. Unfortunately, this collection has several long, too drawn out pieces that made reading tiresome and even a bit boring. What the author does best is show the female attitude and opinion when faced with "man". She has several, almost identical, portrayals where a woman complains about the two-sidedness of man, the sweet and the angry (and all the various variations in between); these are interesting, but after two or so the [...]